The overall goal of this project is to enhance and expand Dr. Christopher Martin's patient-oriented research (POR) program in adolescent and young adult alcohol and drug problems, in the context of mentoring efforts with a set of outstanding trainees who have the potential to be future leaders in the field. Dr. Martin is a mid-career investigator with a strong track record and ongoing funding in POR, and a history of successful mentoring and research training. Effort and salary support will involve intensive mentoring with outstanding young investigators, and career development activities in health disparities and the genetics of addiction that will enhance the mentoring activities. The mentoring and career development activities are highly integrated, with the mutually reinforcing goals of advancing trainee careers and enhancing Dr. Martin's program of POR. Two trainees are junior faculty members with K- awards on which Dr. Martin serves as co-mentor: an NCI grant on the correlates of Nicotine Dependence in African-American youth, and an NIDA grant on substance use and risky sex. Another trainee will begin a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Martin as primary mentor beginning 9/2012. Dr. Martin also will mentor three outstanding trainees who will soon finish or have recently finished graduate school. These trainees share Dr. Martin's interests in longitudinal latent variable modeling and/or candidate gene approaches to substance problem phenotypes in the context of developmental and environmental influences. These trainees will collaborate on these topics with Dr. Martin, and he will serve as a mentor helping them develop their next grant proposal as they move on to postdoctoral or junior faculty positions in Pittsburgh or elsewhere. Dr. Martin will identify and mentor other TBN postdoctoral and junior faculty trainees (e.g., those with K23 and K01 support) during the K24 period. There are a rich set of institutional resources available to support the mentoring and research plans. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The overall goal of this project is to enhance and expand Dr. Christopher Martin's patient- oriented research (POR) program in adolescent and young adult alcohol and drug problems, in the context of mentoring efforts with pre-and post-doctoral fellows and junior faculty. The mentoring will help train outstanding young investigators. The research will directly advance knowledge of the causes and clinical course of adolescent and young adult substance problems.